What Romney Said, and What He Didn’t

September 20th, 2012

Very good piece by Yuval Levin, prompted by Romney’s “47%” remarks:

But I think the argument we’re actually having—or rather the disagreement that actually underlies our politics just now—is really about the deeper question of the structure of American life. The Left’s description of its own worldview (that when we do things together, that’s called government) reveals an astonishingly thin notion of American society, which understands that society as consisting of only individuals and the government, and which neither discerns nor desires much of consequence in the space between the two. But most of life, and especially American life, is lived precisely in the space between those two—that space where the family, civil society, and the private economy thrive, and in turn allow us to thrive.